The two

classes into which

private bills are

CHAPTER XXVI.

TO BE OBSERVED BY PARTIES BEFORE PRIVATE

Chapter
XXVI.

see Introduction.

CONDITIONS
Table of
BILLS ARE INTRODUCED INTO PARLIAMENT. PROOF OF Contents,
COMPLIANCE WITH THE STANDING ORDERS BEFORE THE
EXAMINERS. DETERMINATION AS ΤΟ THE HOUSE IN
WHICH A PRIVATE BILL SHALL BE FIRST INTRODUCed,
AND GENERAL SUPERVISION OF ALL PRIVATE BILLS, BY

THE TWO CHAIRMEN (LORDS AND COMMONS). PARLIA

MENTARY AGENTS.

EXCLUDING the relatively small class of Name, Estate, and other "personal" bills, all private bills to which the standing orders are applicable are divided-by the standdivided, by ing orders, of both houses, relative to private bills-into the two following classes according to the subjects to which they relate :

S. O. 1 (in

both houses).

Burial Ground, making, maintaining, or altering.

Charters and Corporations, enlarging or altering powers of.
Church or Chapel, building, enlarging, repairing, or maintaining.
City or Town, paving, lighting, watching, cleansing or improving.
Company, incorporating, regulating, or giving powers to.
County Rate.

County or Shire Hall, court-house.

Crown, Church, or Corporation Property, or Property held in

Trust for Public or Charitable purposes.

Electricity Supply.

Ferry, where no work is to be executed.

Fishery, making, maintaining or improving.

Gaol or House of Correction.

Gas Work.

Improvement Charge, unless proposed in connection with a Second

Class Work to be authorized by the Bill.

Land inclosing, draining or improving.

Letters Patent.

Local Court, constituting.

Market or Market-place, erecting, improving, repairing, maintain

ing or regulating.

Pilotage.

Police.

Poor, maintaining or employing.

1 Cf. infra p. 839 and Chapter XXIX.

Chapter
XXVI.

Poor Rate.

Powers to sue and be sued, conferring.

Stipendiary Magistrate, or any Public Officer, payment of. And
Continuing or amending an Act passed for any of the purposes
included in this or the Second Class, where no further work
than such as was authorized by a former Act is proposed to be
made.

Making, maintaining, varying, extending, or enlarging any

2nd Class.

bills: how

and

For every private bill-to whichever of these two classes Private it belongs and in whichever house it eventually is first intro- solicited duced—a petition, signed by the parties (or some of them) deposited. who are suitors for the bill, must be duly deposited in the 8.0. 32, 193 (H.C.); Private Bill Office of the House of Commons on or before s. 0. 32 the_17th December, with a printed copy of the bill annexed; and a printed copy of every such bill must also be deposited, on or before the same date, in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments, House of Lords.

(H. L.).

the case of

London

In the case of certain bills promoted by the London Deposit in County Council under the conditions described in standing order No. 194,1 the deposit of the petition for the bill, and other requisite deposits and notices, are fixed at the later dates mentioned in standing order No. 194B.2

1 Supra p. 675, n. 1.

2 Standing orders Nos. 69 and 69B of the House of Lords, which mutatis mutandis correspond to standing

County

bills.

S. O. 194, 194B

orders 194 and 194B (House of Com- (H. C.).
mons), contain provisions to meet
the case of these bills if originating
in the House of Lords.

Preparing bills.

Clauses
Acts.

Compliance required

of both

XXVI.

In preparing their bills for deposit, the promoters must Chapter be careful that no provisions be inserted which are not sufficiently alluded to in the notices, or which otherwise infringe the standing orders; and if the bill be for any of the purposes to which the provisions of any of the Clauses Acts 1 are applicable, these provisions must be incorporated by reference.

The bill is otherwise drawn in conformity with what is known as "the Model Bill," by which the best forms are prescribed. This "Model Bill" is annually issued by the office of the Lords' Chairman of Committees, and is a collection of "model clauses" for railway, tramway, and gas and water bills, and of numerous miscellaneous clauses in common use.2

The requirements of the standing orders which are to be with S. O., complied with by the promoters of private bills before Nos. 3-68, application is made to Parliament, were conveniently arranged by the Commons, in 1847, in the following order; introduc- and a similar arrangement has since been adopted by the House of Lords:

houses,

(a) before

tion of

Private Bill (S. O. 3-59);

"1. Notices by advertisement. 2. Notices and applications to
owners, lessees, and occupiers of lands and houses. 3. Docu-

The principal Clauses Acts are. the Companies Clauses, Lands Clauses, and Railways Clauses Acts, 1845; and the Markets and Fairs Clauses, Gasworks Clauses, Commissioners Clauses, Waterworks Clauses, Harbours and Docks Clauses, Towns Improvement Clauses, Cemetery Clauses, and Town Police Clauses' Consolidation Acts, 1847. See Bigg, Clauses Consolidation Acts. These Acts, as stated in the preambles, were passed, "as well for avoiding the necessity of repeating such provisions in each of the several Acts relating to such undertaking, as for ensuring greater uniformity in the provisions themselves." Some of them are amended by subsequent Acts. Where a bill provides for purchase of land, but not for compulsorily taking it, the Lands Clauses

Acts will be incorporated "except
the provisions relating to the taking
of land otherwise than by agree-
ment." The few exceptions from,
and amendments of, the Clauses
Acts that are now permitted in
drafting private bills are indicated
in the "Model Bill."

2 The "Model Bill"-drawn up
as a body of precedents for the con-
venience of the Lords' Chairman of
Committees in his examination of
private bills (cf. infra, p. 705)—was
originally issued, at a period (1866–7)
of great activity in railway schemes,
as a "Model Railway Bill." But
it has since been considerably en-
larged and, annually re-edited at
the close of every session by the
Counsel to the Lords' Chairman, it
is now of indispensable service in
the promotion of private bills.

Chapter
XXVI.

ments required to be deposited, and the times and places of
deposit.1 4. Form in which plans, books of reference, sections,
and cross-sections shall be prepared. 5. Estimates and deposit
of money,2 and declaration in certain cases."

The requirements of the two houses, under each of these
divisions, are now, mutatis mutandis, nearly identical.
Their convenient arrangement and general similarity render
unnecessary their insertion in this work; and no version
of the standing orders, of either house, relating to private
bills can, at any time, be safely relied upon by the pro-
moters of bills, except the last authorized edition.1

after intro

In addition to the standing orders above alluded to, there and (b) are others (Nos. 60-68), the compliance with which is duction (S. O. 60proved after the introduction of the bills into Parliament; 68). of these, No. 60 relates only to the deposit of certain bills with government departments, and No. 61,6 and Nos. 62-68,7 will in due course be further mentioned.

Com

pliance,

Compliance with the standing orders was formerly required to be separately proved-in the Commons, before how proved. the committees on petitions for private bills; and in the Lords, before the standing orders committee. But in 1847 the House of Commons provided, by standing order, for the appointment of one or more "Examiners of petitions The for private bills," 8 instead of the committees previously

1 As to the custody, and as to facilities for the inspection of, documents directed to be locally deposited under the standing orders, cf. the Parliamentary Documents Deposits Act, 1837, and standing order (Lords) No. 146.

2 As to the custody of money deposits required under the standing orders, cf. the Parliamentary Deposits Act, 1846.

3 The standing orders of both houses are numbered alike, from No. 1 to No. 68; but there are two (numbered 25C and 36A) which are in the Lords' standing orders only, and one (numbered 35A) which is only in the Commons' standing orders. The material differences between the Lords' and the Com

Examiners.

Their duties.

General

XXVI.

appointed. A few years later, in 1854, the Lords resolved, Chapter
"That there shall be one or more officers of this house, to
be called 'the Examiners for standing orders,"" to examine
into certain of the facts required to be proved before their
standing orders committee; they then appointed as their
Examiners the gentlemen who held the office of Examiners
of petitions in the House of Commons; and finally, in
1858, they entrusted to these officers the same powers
which they had previously exercised as Examiners for the
Commons. This most convenient arrangement has enabled
the Examiners to take the evidence on behalf of both
houses simultaneously, and has obviated the necessity for
a double proof of all those orders, common to both houses,
with which parties, at a heavy expense and with an interval
of some months between the proofs, were formerly obliged
to prove compliance twice over. The two Examiners, there-
fore,-appointed by the House of Lords and Mr. Speaker-
now conduct, for both houses, the preliminary investiga-
tions formerly carried on separately in each house: they
adjudicate upon all facts relating to the compliance or
non-compliance with the standing orders; and, in those
cases where they find that standing orders have not been
complied with, the standing orders committee in each
house determines, upon the facts as reported by the Ex-
aminers, whether these orders ought or ought not to be
dispensed with.1

When all the petitions for private bills, with printed
Petitions copies of the bills annexed, have been deposited, on or before

List of

for Bills.

S. O. 229 (H. C.).

Cf. infra, pp. 716 (standing orders committee, House of Commons) and 841 (standing orders committee, House of Lords). When the Examiner has found that the standing orders have not been complied with in the case of a petition for a bill, and the standing orders committee of the house in which the bill originates have reported that they should be dispensed with, the standing orders committee of the second house do not defer their decision until the bill reaches their

house, but at once consider and
pronounce upon the Examiner's re-
port also. By adopting this course
they obviate the possibility of a
promoter proceeding with his bill
through the first house and then
finding its subsequent progress
barred by their giving a different
decision, upon its reaching the
second house, to that of the stand-
ing orders committee in the first.
In practice, the view taken by both
committees in these cases has, as a
rule, been the same.